You might not have heard of it, but accidental deletion is a substantial risk to your business, if you’re not properly prepared. It can be disastrous, causing just as much disruption as a cyber attack. In this blog we will outline the risks and demonstrate how to easily ensure it doesn’t happen to you.
Introduction
Accidental deletion rarely makes the headlines. People are embarrassed and there’s no legal obligation to notify clients, stakeholders or the data protection commission (except in rare circumstances). Instead, companies often suffer the consequences behind closed doors.
But it happens more than you’d think and it is causing real problems to companies like yours, when the right fail safes aren’t in place.
What is accidental deletion?
Accidental deletion is when files get deleted by accident. It can happen when someone is moving files around or when someone means to delete a file but deletes a whole folder. It can also be an accidental click which was meant to do something else. It can even be a disgruntled ex-employee as they leave.
Why accidental deletion matters
It doesn’t really matter how you lose your data, losing it is a bad idea. Think about some of the files you rely on to do your job day-to-day – or the valuable data you have stored about clients or services – and now imagine losing it. How would you do your job? Would the business recover?
And accidental deletion doesn’t just cover individual files; in some circumstances the entirety of a company’s data has been lost. Fundamentally, accidental deletion is a problem because it will cost your business – in time and eventually in money.
The cost of data loss
Accidental deletion is only a problem if you don’t have the correct backup systems in place. The scary fact is – despite this being a basic part of cyber security – many businesses don’t have functional back-up systems.
Here are some harrowing stats:
- If a business loses data for more than 10 days, 93% of those companies go bankrupt within a year.
- Globally, 51% of companies that lose their data ultimately shut down within two years.
- 94% of companies can’t recover from a severe data loss at all.
It really happens - it happened to one of our clients
If you’re still not convinced this could happen to you, then you’ll be surprised to learn that one of our clients recently accidentally deleted a huge amount of data. Luckily, we were able to minimise the disruption and recover the critical files.
It was a simple and innocent human error. Someone was tidying up their OneDrive and accidently deleted their entire SharePoint folder. On realising, the device that was deleting the files, it was shut down and Resolve came and restored the data.
Here what they said following the incident:
We’re incredibly grateful for the prompt and professional support we received during a recent data loss incident. The team responded quickly, communicated clearly and demonstrated exceptional technical expertise, enabling us to recover critical files with minimal disruption. It’s reassuring to know we have such a reliable partner we can count on
Wonderfully, there are plenty of solutions out there to protect your business, should your mouse stumble over the delete button.
How to protect your business
If you are a Resolve client, there are things we can do to retrieve data. But the best way to ensure minimal disruption is to be prepared. You need good backup systems in place and check them regularly.
Here are some popular data backup solutions. The one that is best for your business will depend on the systems you use.
Many of our clients use SharePoint. It takes a partial snapshot every 12 hours and backup keeps the data for a few weeks. The downside is you might lose a day of work and need to start the recovery process soon after the accidental deletion.
Microsoft Azure Site recover is a good option. It quickly restores your services to the cloud. This is a great option for businesses with a fast internet connection and on-site Windows Server Virtual Servers.
Microsoft 365 Backup is another popular choice. It backs up your Microsoft 365 Data such as email and Teams to a data centre, ensuring it is there for recovery in the event of accidental or deliberate data loss. You would need to use Microsoft 365 already.
Veeam Backup Essentials is our most popular server backup. It provides full data protection and includes an option to backup data at an offsite data centre.
Last bit of advice to protect your business
Like with our client who suffered an accidental deletion, it doesn’t have to be disastrous.
Backing up regularly protects you, if set up correctly.
And always remember to:
- Test your backups often
- Know your recovery window
- Regularly train your team to store data correctly
Talk to your IT support team about your recovery window and ways to make your backup systems more robust and reliable.
If you are ready to protect your business from accidental deletion, contact us.
To discuss this further, please call our Solutions team on 0114 2134 555 or email solutions@resolve.co.uk
Sources
https://coolest-gadgets.com/data-loss-statistics-and-facts-2025
https://www.businessdasher.com/data-loss-statistics/
